What Is a Concept Model?

Summary:
Business analysts of every stripe need concept models. Concept modeling provides clarity and structure for business analysis and business communication in a way that data modeling and other techniques simply can't. Increasingly the industry focus is on white-collar, knowledge-rich, decision-laden business processes. Concept models are ideally suited for such work. Even though vendors currently don't advertise the fact, effective business rule and decision modeling work is difficult without concept models. In this month's column, Ron Ross explains what they're all about.

A concept model organizes the business vocabulary needed to communicate consistently and thoroughly about the know-how of a problem domain.

A concept model starts with a glossary of business terms and definitions. It puts a very high premium on high-quality, design-independent definitions, free of data or implementation biases. It also emphasizes rich vocabulary.

A concept model is always about identifying the correct choice of terms to use in communications, including statements of business rules and requirements, especially where high precision and subtle distinctions need to be made. The core concepts of a business problem domain are typically quite stable over time.[1]

The project or initiative needs to capture 100s or 1,000s of business rules.

There is significant push-back from business stakeholders about the perceived technical nature of data models, class diagrams, or data element nomenclature and definition.

Outside-the-box solutions are sought when reengineering business processes or other aspects of business capability.

The organization faces regulatory or compliance challenges.

Definition of Concept Model

a model that develops the meaning of core concepts for a problem domain, defines their collective structure, and specifies the appropriate vocabulary needed to communicate about it consistently

The standard for concept models is the OMG standard Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR).[2]

Concept Model vs. Data Model

A concept model differs from a data model in important ways. The goal of a concept model is to support the expression of natural-language statements, and supply their semantics — not unify, codify (and sometimes simplify) data. Therefore the vocabulary included in a concept model is far richer, as suits knowledge-intensive problem domains. In short, concept models are concept-centric; data models are thing-entity-or-class-centric.

Data models can usually be rather easily derived from concept models; the reverse is much harder (or impossible). Like data models, concept models are often rendered graphically, but free of such distractions to business stakeholders as cardinalities.

Verb Concepts. Verb concepts provide basic structural connections between noun concepts. These verb concepts are given standard wordings, so they can be referenced unambiguously.

In BACCM some basic wordings for verb concepts include: Value is measured relative to Context, Change is made to implement Solution, Stakeholder has Need.

In a financial business, some basic wordings for verb concepts include: Lien is held against Real Estate Property, Party requests Loan, Asset is included in Mortgage Application.

Note that these wordings are not sentences per se; they are the building blocks of sentences (such as business rule statements). Sometimes verb concepts are derived, inferred, or computed by definitional rules. This is how new knowledge or information is built up from more basic facts.

Other Connections. Since concept models must support rich meaning (semantics), other types of standard connections are used besides verb concepts. These include but are not limited to:

Categorizations — e.g., Person and Organization are two categories of Party.

[3] The first set of examples in each of the following two subsections is from the Business Analysis Core Concepts Model (BACCM), a part of the IIBA's Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK), version 3.

Ron is recognized internationally as the "father of business rules." He is the author of ten professional books including the groundbreaking first book on business rules The Business Rule Book in 1994. His newest are:

Ron serves as Executive Editor of BRCommunity.com and its flagship publication, Business Rules Journal. He is a sought-after speaker at conferences world-wide. More than 50,000 people have heard him speak; many more have attended his seminars and read his books.

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